


oh, what providence, what divine intelligence

by bokutoma



Series: sylvix week 2020 [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Anal Sex, Breathplay, Grief/Mourning, Gun Violence, M/M, Major Character Injury, Revenge, Still, Swordfighting, Under-negotiated Kink, it's in the moment with multiple check-ins but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:21:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26611339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bokutoma/pseuds/bokutoma
Summary: in the aftermath of a navy raid, felix craves revenge, but sylvain just craves him
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: sylvix week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1930645
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40
Collections: Sylvix Week 2020 Fic Collection





	oh, what providence, what divine intelligence

**Author's Note:**

> more baller art from lark can be found [here ](https://twitter.com/kingblaiddyd/status/1308789572382478337?s=21)

In the days following the Imperial ambush, the seas are quiet.

Sylvain could be grateful for small mercies, he supposes. It's hardly as though they need _more_ challenges these days. Still, less than two weeks after Admiral Edelgard of the _H.M.S. Black Eagle_ nearly blew a hole in the _Blue Lion_ and took Glenn and the captain's eye instead, and he isn't exactly feeling grateful for much.

There's still work to be done, though, managing a ship like this, no matter how unified the crew. Mutiny isn't a thought that ever crosses the mind of Captain Blaiddyd's crew, but these are not normal times, and they hadn't fought so hard only to drift into the path of Imperial cannon fodder. With the first mate dead and the captain clinging to his life and his sanity, that leaves leadership squarely on Sylvain's shoulders.

Most pirate ships are not so fortunate as to have a first mate; quartermasters, like Sylvain, usually amount to the same thing. No sane man leaves control of supplies to someone he doesn't trust, after all.

Glenn had been a blessing straight from the mouth of Neptune; he'd never tired, never questioned any crewmate unless he'd had to, and his skill with pistol and sword were both unmatched. He'd been a powder monkey in the navy, once upon a time, and though defections like that weren't uncommon, the Imperial bastards had been fools to lose him.

And yes, Sylvain is - was - grateful for those things, because it had left him free to focus on drinking and carousing and his own blessed duties, but they are not what had created a debt between them that he now no longer has any hope of repaying.

No, that honor belongs to the acquisition of their sailing master, Felix Fraldarius.

When Glenn had defected during the crew of the _Lion's_ routine raid of navy ships, the Imperials had pressed his younger brother into service instead.

Whether he was meant to be leverage or to make a mole out of Glenn had been anyone's guess, but the moment the _Blue Lion_ had boarded his ship, Felix had taken one look at his brother, proud in his new, richly dyed garments, and shot his own captain dead between the eyes.

The battle after that had been brutally short; Felix had skewered two more of his own crewmates before anyone, pirate or navy, had had the sense to draw their own weapons, and the pirate's superior numbers and arms had left the remainders of the crew bereft of all but their undergarments and stale bread.

When Felix boards their ship with them, nobody contests it. After all, it's not as though the navy would ever have him back after that showing. Still, there is naught but silence between them all until Glenn breaks it with a resounding slap to Felix's back, one that sends him stumbling forward.

"You didn't have to kill them, you know," he laughs, and for any other family, that would be a strange sentence indeed.

Felix's sharp cheekbones gird themselves with red as he growls out, "How else was your crew supposed to take me seriously?"

From that moment on, Sylvain is lost.

It's not hard to imagine that Felix is not feeling his best right now, all things considered. He knows the others had expected him to step up in some capacity; he may have been a gunner in the navy, but aboard the _Blue Lion_ , the sailing master is an officer in his own right.

They do not think he grieves, he who shot his own crewmates. They hadn't been close enough to witness the roses that had bloomed in the full of his cheeks, hadn't been privy to the nightmare-fueled pacing that had led him to the kitchens night after night, gambling for nothing with Glenn and Sylvain, raiding Dedue's private stash while the cook pretended not to notice.

They had not seen the way he'd seethed when Glenn was shot in the arm just three moons ago, at himself and the whole damned world, tears in his eyes and nails at his own arms.

So yes, they had lost a treasured friend - to a few, even a lover - but no others know the way Felix weeps at the loss of his brother.

But that is neither here nor there. Mercedes, the ship's surgeon - picked up from a port close to the heart of the Empire - has been instrumental in helping Sylvain structure some sense of normalcy amidst the grief, but now it's his turn to help her.

No one ventures near the captain's quarters these days.

It starts with a wild moaning, more animal than human, like a wolf howling at the moon. Sylvain has limited experience with the beasts of land, but if they sound and act anything like Captain Blaiddyd, he'd prefer to avoid them at all costs.

The door to Dimitri's quarters swings precariously on half-torn hinges, a problem no one has yet had the time or energy to fix. It's Ashe who's handiest with carpentry, after all, and Glenn had always had a soft spot for the gunners. It closes, though, and that's all they can ask when the captain cannot rise to use it.

He is near silent as he pads in, but if he were truly trying to sneak in, he wouldn't have needed to bother. The baying cries that tear their way from the captain's chest in ragged splinters are louder in the confines of this enclosed space. Mercedes is already here, unpacking her supplies with calm efficiency, and he wonders what it might take to shake that facade, what she must have seen that nothing they have done breaks her quiet confidence.

It is none of this that surprises him, though.

Instead, it's Felix's slender frame slouched in the corner, nails digging into his forearms where he's rolled up his sleeves, that does the trick. His eyes are red-rimmed, and it's so alarmingly close to the dewy-eyed look that he had given Sylvain just over a week ago, before the damned attack, when he had leaned down to whisper how lovely Felix looked even in the dim candlelight of the kitchens.

It's fucking unfair.

"Are you almost ready?" Felix bites out, hardly even looking at Sylvain.

"Almost," Mercedes says, and then she's straightening, thread and plasters in hand. "Positions, please."

Here is the kicker: it's not Felix who does this day in and out, holding down the captain so an errant limb doesn't strike Mercedes while she's tending to the mess. It has been Sylvain and Dedue since this macabre, miserable routine started less than a week ago, and it should be them now. Why Felix had volunteered when he looks as though he'd rather be anywhere else is beyond him. Still, they settle into place, Felix at the captain's feet, where he can bear down with all his weight to keep him still, and Sylvain at his arms, gripping at the wrists in such a fashion that Dimitri cannot grab back. He may not have the raw strength of Dedue, but he's practiced with restraint in all its forms.

It's Sylvain who's closest to the carnage when Mercedes removes the bandages, but it's Felix who hisses out a gasp when he sees the mess Admiral Edelgard's first mate left as the Empire's parting gift. Sylvain doesn't blame him; no one thinks of an eyeball as meaty until they've seen it like this.

Dimitri's wretched howls start up again as fresh air hits the swollen mess where his eye used to be, and Felix lurches for a moment before bearing down again as the captain kicks out. Mercedes clicks her tongue, and Sylvain tears his gaze away from where it had been stuck in morbid fascination to see the worry on her face.

"It's beginning to look infected," she murmurs, but even as she frets, she's already rummaging for a different plaster. As far as worry goes, Dimitri isn't the one he's worried about right now, though; Mercedes is nothing short of a miracle worker.

No, what Sylvain is concerned about is the fine sheen of sweat on Felix's forehead, the gaunt, pale lines of his cheekbones barren of anything but exhaustion.

He holds Dimitri's arms with ironclad strength until Mercedes dismisses them, hints of lucidity back in the slurred mumble of the captain's voice, and then he corners Felix just outside.

"When's the last time you ate?" he asks, clapping a hand on Felix's shoulder in a move that's just as likely to get his arm bitten off as it is to comfort.

He doesn't shake it off, though. Instead, his gaze goes distant even as he meets Sylvain's. "I asked Dedue to let me come instead today."

"I figured."

"I wanted to know if he suffered. If he _is_ suffering."

That isn't what Sylvain is expecting. "I think anyone within a league of us can tell that he's suffering."

Felix's eyes sharpen at that, and with them, so does his misery. "I wanted to know so I could stop feeling bad for wishing he was dead instead. If I could want it."

"And do you?"

"No." His mouth twists. "A little. Does that make me a bad person?"

Sylvain thinks of Glenn, all spark and gunpowder, all burgeoning laugh lines and bruised knuckles, and how he stepped in front of a bullet meant for the captain. He thinks of Dimitri and his genial cheer, the way he was born into luxury but delivers a large portion of his profits to each port they stop in. "Probably," he says. "But I won't tell."

* * *

The lights are low in Sylvain's cabin as he curses futilely at the seven dropped stitches in Annette's replacement cloak. Normally Mercedes would be doing it, but she has other business to attend to, and Sylvain may have exaggerated his skill with a needle to convince her to spend her nights resting. He'll have to speak with Dedue in the morning; surely his cooking will be better than his sewing.

Seven sharp raps sound at the door, and Sylvain swears loudly as he drops his needle somewhere in the plush carpet he'd picked up in a Brigid port. "Come in!" he calls, though only the seas know who's on the other side. Only Glenn has ever sought him out this late, after all.

For a moment, as the silhouette outside is backlit by the swollen moon, he lets himself believe that it _is_ Glenn who awaits him, ready to drag him down to the kitchens and get drunk off foul cooking sherry until Dedue threatens to utilize his wooden spoon for something other than stirring the stew. The hair is too long, though, and the figure just this side of too slight.

"Felix," he murmurs, and wonders if perhaps he's fallen asleep. Why else would he be here, quiet as a dream and twice as hungry? Sylvain's candlelight is a poor substitute for what the light of day does to paint him in shades of gold, but the amber of his eyes shines darkly, and his breath catches in his throat. "What can I do for you?"

Then Felix is crushing their mouths together in an embrace too brutal to be called a kiss, one hand cradling Sylvain's jaw far too tenderly for the bruising weight of his mouth.

Probably, Sylvain should be responsible. Felix is grieving, he's in turmoil, and even if Sylvain still thinks this might have happened in a kinder world where the last week had never happened, it's still not right.

But he is tired, too. _He_ is grieving; Glenn had been a dear friend, more like a brother than his own, wherever he might be. He'd told Mercedes to rest, told the rest of the crew that he could handle leadership, but Dimitri was always supposed to be captain. This right here is the closest he's been to quieting his thoughts since Admiral Edelgard and her blasted ship could be sighted, and he wants Felix so badly, he aches.

"Fe," he says again, traitorous mouth tearing away for breath. "Felix, I-"

"Shut up," Felix pants, and then he's licking his way into Sylvain's mouth like he belongs there. It would be beyond any man's restraint to resist tangling a hand into Felix's hair, and if Sylvain's hand squeezes hard at his waist as well, the dig of Felix's sharp nails and twitch of those hips seem to indicate he doesn't mind. "Or say something worth listening to."

That, Sylvain can do. "Hold on tight," he murmurs into the curve of Felix's neck, and then he heaves them up with the sort of strength that comes naturally to a seafaring life. It's five steps to his bed; it's a path he's traced thousands of times since he first boarded the _Blue Lion_. With Felix gasping prettily in his ear, it feels like five hundred.

He means to set him down and undress him, unwrap him like a gift so he can make note of how far his flush spreads, how best to make him cry out. He's craved this from the very outset, after all.

Felix, however, has different plans.

Sylvain may be experienced, but there is nothing like the frantic pace Felix sets, and in a haze of shared breaths and a hand fitting loosely around his throat, his shirt is off, and Felix's vest has followed, his own blouse untucked and rucked up around his chest.

"Is this okay?" Felix pants, his voice coming out in not-quite whines, his eyes fixed on where his palm meets Sylvain's throat. There is hardly any pressure, but Sylvain likes this as a reminder of his presence, likes how it makes him feel wanted.

He nods, and Felix's hand tightens minutely, unthinkingly. Purposeful or not, it tears a low groan from him all the same.

The sound snaps the tenuous control they'd managed to get over themselves, and Sylvain can't think but for scoring the newly revealed flesh of Felix's thighs with red bruises, teeth just a firmer kiss with the way Felix threads his hand through his hair and tugs him back for more.

"Open me up," Felix growls, his gaze sharp and hungry. "You can handle that, can't you?"

Sylvain is suddenly, painfully grateful for every awkward tumble in a port brothel before he knew what he was doing. "Yes," he manages, voice already low and gravelly with need. "I can do that."

Felix rolls over then, and though Sylvain misses the contact, that is nothing compared to the way he can smooth his hands over every inch of him now. "Get to it, then," he says, the sharpness of his voice belying the furious, fire-tinted ruddiness of his cheeks. Sylvain hadn't been looking before, but it's spread down to his chest, and if he weren't otherwise occupied, he would beg to be allowed to chase it with his tongue.

His tongue. Right.

Whatever he might have dreamed this moment would be like, it's nothing compared to the reality of Felix in every one of his senses as he works him open with his mouth and fingers. Sweet, sharp-tongued Felix has dropped his guard, and as he grips Sylvain's bed frame enough for his nails to dig into the wood, he moans in stuttered breaths that have Sylvain's pulse racing in his ears.

And Felix clearly feels as though he's ready if the way he squirms from Sylvain's hunger is any indication, but he's failed to take into account that Sylvain could do this forever, even as his own hips rut futilely where he is still trapped in his pants.

"Cease that, you insatiable fool," Felix hisses, his foot thumping softly against Sylvain's shoulder. Between that and his sweat-slick, scarlet face, he doesn't seem to mind too much, but Sylvain tears himself away anyway, making a conscientious effort to bring his gaze to Felix's face.

"Am I overwhelming you, dear heart?" The impact of his teasing is decidedly lessened by his own shortness of breath, but when Felix's mouth twitches up like he knows he's sensed a weakness, he can't bring himself to mind.

"Trousers off and on your back," Felix commands, and as Sylvain obeys, Felix's flush recedes and Sylvain's worsens. "Faster."

There's a joke in there somewhere, but Sylvain is tripping over himself to lay back just as he was told, and his mind is fogged over with the desire for contact, the desire to please. "Like this?"

"It will do." But the near-manic, knifelike edge of Felix's want has softened, and his mouth twists into something like a smile as he swings his leg over to straddle Sylvain. His hand comes to rest on Sylvain's chest as he balances, and Sylvain can't stop the twitch of his hips as he lines them up. Felix squeezes him in retaliation, brutal and wonderful, and Sylvain nearly chokes on air.

Then he's sinking down, slicker than Sylvain remembers, and he'll think about the logistics of Felix continuing to work himself open while Sylvain was making a damn fool of himself later, because he no longer has a functioning brain.

That hand slides back up to his neck, and even as Felix sinks his teeth into his lip to prevent the escape of noises that would surely tilt Sylvain's world on its axis, he raises an eyebrow in question.

" _Please_ ," he gasps.

 _"Please,"_ he cries as his hips snap upward.

 _"Please,"_ he begs as the dual pressure on his throat and in the low of his gut increases.

 _"Please,"_ he moans, dragged out and broken, and then Felix grants him another anchoring kiss, and he is gone.

What could be anywhere up to an hour later, he stirs to find Felix watching him, his gaze sleepy but no less intent for it.

"Can I help you?" he mumbles, reaching up to play with a stray lock of dark hair. He's expecting a reprimand; he's dreading a farewell.

"I know where Edelgard's crew will be docking," Felix says instead.

"I see."

"Are you helping or not?" And Sylvain sees the real question in his eyes: will he chart the course? Because, of course, Dimitri is in no state to lead, and that leaves the mantle firmly on his shoulders.

"Is that what this is about?"

"You're the quartermaster." The pause that follows is long enough to turn Sylvain cold, to wonder at the lengths Felix has gone to for his vengeance. "And..."

"And?"

"You're my friend."

And maybe he should protest that. If this is Felix's definition of friendly, after all, he has some minor concerns about the rest of the crew. In truth, however, he knows how Felix's mind works, knows how much it takes for him to say that much.

Felix has never called him a friend before.

"What's the plan?" he asks, and the fire that lights in Felix's eyes warms him as well.

* * *

A common misconception about piracy that the common masses hold is that it's all daring sea battles and leaping from the rigging. That's all well and good, of course - they have to board ships in order to loot them, after all, and there are few who will readily stand aside as everything but the clothes on their back are taken from them - but generally speaking, the Imperial navy both outguns and outmans a simple pirate ship.

This is not so on land.

Felix lets his third body of the hour drop in the alleyway they'd lead him to; he'd been the sailing master of the admiral's ship, though the way he'd prattled on about making an example of them to the nation had made Sylvain wonder if he hadn't been itching for a higher rank.

The other two had been easy. The boatswain had been caught entirely unaware, too caught up in the novelty of a port that must have been foreign to her. One of the gunners had been even easier; all Sylvain had had to do was let himself be seen and flash a teasing smile, and he had all but run into Felix's blade.

The only hiccup in their plan so far had come in the form of the cook and the surgeon. The cook had already been in the back alley of the brothel they'd decided to use as a base - some of the workers still knew Sylvain on sight - hiding from the world at large. As Sylvain had cocked his pistol and pressed it to her temple, he'd felt bad, but there had not been and could not be an allowance for mercy.

Then Felix had let out a quickly strangled cry, and Sylvain had wheeled around, cook in a headlock, to spot the surgeon, hand on Felix's neck with a dagger at his jugular.

"So," Sylvain had said, trying to disguise the pounding of his heart.

"If that's your opening statement, you're a miserable negotiator," the surgeon had replied, and Felix had snorted with laughter that hadn't quite fit the moment.

"What do I have that you want?"

"If you let her go," he'd started, jerking his chin at the cook. "And let us both leave, we'll flee. We won't even go back to the navy."

"Not like you could," Felix had grumbled.

And they had.

This, however, leaves four crew members remaining, and no sooner do they attempt to head back to the _Blue Lion_ for reinforcements than the other gunner and the quartermaster appear.

Sylvain and the quartermaster draw on each other with equal speed.

"Might I know the name of the lovely lady I'm about to put a bullet through?" he asks, watching as Felix and the gunner stalk closer to each other. This close, Sylvain recognizes him as Jeritza, lauded for singlehandedly ambushing the village of Remire and slaughtering the crews of two separate ships.

Felix, he knows, is better.

The quartermaster sweeps a critical eye over him, taking in the puffed shirt, the fitted trousers, the new boots, all while the barrel of her gun never wavers. She grins, and there is something alarmingly predatory in it. "For you? I suppose you look expensive enough. You can call me Dorothea when you beg for your life."

"If I can talk, you're not aiming right," he says, then pulls the trigger.

He gets her in her shooting arm before she can pull, and he doesn't spare a glance for the screech of colliding swords as he rushes Dorothea's collapsing form. It doesn't take much to wrestle her pistol away from her, but she claws him in the face for his trouble, and he grins as blood wells up in his cheek.

"Do I have to kill you?" he asks, because he's always been the soft one between him and Felix.

Dorothea looks at him, eyes clear despite the pain she must be in, and there is a hatred and an understanding there so profound that it takes his breath away. "If you want to kill Edie? Kill me twice."

So he does, and he tries not to think about the spray of matter that stains his clothes as he breathes out and turns to Felix.

The first thing he sees is the jagged slash running through Jeritza's chest, thin enough not to be debilitating, but dripping blood regardless. Felix's brow is furrowed as he concentrates, but the damn gunner's teeth are bared in an inhuman smile as he jabs his blade toward Felix's heart.

"One of us will see your brother in Hell," Jeritza whispers.

But that is the wrong thing to say to Felix, and it takes less than a second for the gunner's entrails to spill out from his body as it falls, prone, to the ground.

Felix spits as the light dies in Jeritza's eyes, and a bullet tears through his hand.

At the mouth of the alley, dressed in the blood-red of the Empire, are Admiral Edelgard and her first mate.

"Around the corner!" Sylvain barks as Felix cries out, dropping his sword, and for once, Felix listens before Hubert can get another shot off.

Edelgard's eyes have not torn themselves from Dorothea's body.

"Which one of you killed her?" she calls, voice hard. Sylvain is the only one with his gun drawn, but he thinks he can understand this misstep.

"Which one of you killed Glenn?" he retorts.

Hubert's gun is leveled at him now. "Does it matter? Both of you will be dead soon."

Acrid smoke stings at Sylvain’s eyes and he cannot hear Felix anymore, but he smiles as widely as he can. "I figure that I might be able to get one shot off before I'm dead. Just want to know who to aim for."

"The admiral made the shot, of course, accurate as it was. _I_ was the one who left your captain something to remember us by."

And in the time it takes for Hubert to shift in front of Edelgard, they've both fired.

As Sylvain hits the ground to feel cobblestone and dirt digging into the torn flesh of his shoulder, he has the brief, grimly euphoric knowledge that he had not missed; the caved-in ruin of Hubert's face speaks to that. As stars of pain burst beneath his eyelids, his teeth cut into his lip to stifle his howl of pain.

He hopes this will be enough for Felix.

Between rounds of ringing in his ears, he hears Admiral Edelgard draw her sword and understands that his death will not be a quick one. Desperately, he tries to fish out memories of last night; when he dies, he wants his last thoughts to be of Felix.

The final shot to ring through the alley sounds like no pistol Sylvain has ever heard.

With more effort than he thinks he's ever exerted in his life, he raises his head to see Felix, dear, sweet Felix, with a musket in hand, wincing as the fingers of his injured hand shake wildly.

The admiral's chest is a wasteland of bone, blood, and muscle, and when she falls mere feet from Dorothea, he is almost happy for her.

Then he feels nothing.

* * *

It is a fortunate thing that Linhardt and Bernadetta did not actually run away. Mercedes would have had her hands full dealing with _three_ grievously injured crewmates, after all.

"I'm impressed you managed it," Linhardt remarks as he redoes the bandages on Sylvain's shoulder. Bernadetta has long since retired; as it turns out, she makes a damn fine carpenter, and there are always repairs to be made. "Killing Edelgard, that is. Flex your fingers for me, please."

Sylvain does as asked, wincing as a burning jolt of pain runs through his thumb, ring finger, and little finger. "You really don't sound that upset about that. She _was_ your captain, right?"

Linhardt hands him a small rod, and he grabs it with trepidation, more needles singing out to stab up and down his arm. "Hold for as long as you can. Yes, she was my captain, but that doesn't mean I agreed with all of her decisions. I admired her... determination, but I've never done well with authority."

"So you decided to join a pirate crew?"

"I'm hardly going to be punished for insubordination in a more truly democratic setting, am I? Besides, I'll let you all bleed out if you try anything."

"Now I understand why you and Mercedes get along so well." Abruptly, his hand spasms, and the rod clatters out of his loosened grip with a thud. _"Shit."_

"You didn't think you would be healed in a few days, did you?" Still, Linhardt looks sympathetic. "Go be comforted by Felix or something. You're healing about as well as can be expected."

"And Dimitri?"

"The infection is clearing, and he can stay awake for longer periods. Now _go_."

Sylvain knows a dismissal when he hears one even if he doesn't always listen, and by the time he's made it back to his quarters, he is unsurprised to see the light of a candle flickering beneath his door.

"Evening, Fe," he says as he kicks his door shut again. Even from here, the tremble of Felix's sword hand is visible, but the fact that the candle is lit is a good sign; last night, he had nearly caught the rug on fire in his frustration.

They make a fine pair, the two of them, wordlessly fumbling with the catches and ties of their clothes as they undress. It's been days, but Sylvain catches the crease of Felix's brow when he looks at his weaponry, when Ashe and Ingrid spar. He feels it when he has to ask Dedue for help getting things from the pantry, items he'd never once struggled with before.

For now, though, as they climb into bed, Sylvain presses a kiss to Felix's forehead, and he has faith that things will look up.

After all, the seas are still calm.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: @kingblaiddyd


End file.
